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Oxford Discourse

Introduction (1min30sec)

Democracy begins to end as soon as the social product of labor is pocketed by a class to the detriment
of all producers. This private accumulation of social production implies the progressive separation of
producers from the means of subsistence and the means of production that become the private
property of a class which, consequently, becomes not only the one who holds political power but also
the one who will spread its own ideas as if they were universal. This movement of centralization of
the product of labor (means of subsistence and production), on the one hand, and the separation of
the producers from these means, as well as from the conditions of production, on the other, constitutes
in itself the negation of democracy. As the ultimate result of the negation of democracy is democracy,
democracy results to be not only the negation but also the abolition of the private property of the
means of production.

Show slide 2 to 4.

Centralization of capital and concentration of political power (5min)

This process is not homogeneous. In fact, in spite of its globalization, capitalism did not lead to global
centralizazion of capital and, therefore, to a global concentration of political power. It did not
achieved a global bourgeois State. The ruling classe had three limits.

Show slide 5.

1. The indiscriminate extension of capitalist development to the benefits of the more advanced
capitalist classes would first make the over profits fall at the average rate of profit, and then begin a
fall of the average rate of profit itself. Capital accumulation surrenders to primitive accumulation.
2. The condition of the production of surplus value, i.e., labor-power, lives and reproduces
itself in certain places. It is true that these could be moved by means of ‘geographical mobility
policies’ (i.e., spatial flexibility), but are always moved within limits of profit.
3. De-localization implies localization, i.e., the shift of money-capital and of fixed capital
from one place to another. However, in spite of this, there is no possibility of fully replicating the

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conditions of fixity of capitalist production. An example of all is land rent. Capital is not so liquid. It
is both a thing and a social relation. It is limited.
In order to circumvent those limits, attacks on the workforce, a further ‘abstraction’ of the
economy and a turning back to primivite accumulation was necessary to restore profit, and politcal
power. The abstraction of the economy began when banks started to turn loans into commodities to
sell (in the 80s). This process in religion is called transubstantiation and in capitalist political economy
it is called securitization. The ‘substance’ of loan contract is transformed into the ‘substance’ of
financial security.
The deconstruction and the change of the international structure is more than visible from the
positive cycle of raising profits, of the antisocial measures of the neoliberal sphere until the bursting
of the bubble in the early 2000s (especially visible from 1982 to 1997).
The gross world product has increased three times, the export of goods and services by five. But the
fictitious ‘production’ based on the exploitation of ‘real’ value and surplus value production has
grown more markedly. The ‘market’ of securities has increased seven-fold, that of the international
bank loans of eight, the currency market by nine while that of the derivatives has increased by ninety-
eight times.

World bourgeois State (2min)

Show slide 6 and 7.

This means something very specific. The advanced nations, especially the US, had surpassed
the wall of the human labor force, to make room for the most comprehensive form of machines, but
only because its salaried class became international. In other terms, it happened only becuase its
generalization of production subsumed more surplus value coming from less developed countries. An
overcoming made necessary not by the absolute superiority of the United States compared to the other
advanced or developing nations, but rather by:

1. The falling rate of profit at the end of the 60s


2. The increase of the world organic compisition of capital
3. The rise of productivity of Europe and developing countries
4. The large amount of deposits of US dollars outside the US

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As this would have drained Fort Knox at the speed of light, before starting to cannibalize the internal
economy of the US, Nixon was forced by big bourgeoise intererests to break the convertibility of US
dollars into gold. The fluctuating era dominated by finance had just begun (1971-1973).

Negation of democracy: 1. Ideology, 2. Flexibility and 3. Unemployment

1. Ideology (2min)

Show slide 8.

One of the means that the ruling class uses to deny democracy and, consequently, to affirm it only
ideally is ideology. Ideology can be succinctly defined as presenting private interests, based on the
private ownership of the means of production, as if they were universal. It gives the appearance of
being all on the same side.
The class struggles themselves, like trade unions or any other form of ‘democratic’
partecipation are absorbed by capitalism itself. The German trade union policy is quite emblematic
in this respect. IG Metall, a dominant metalworkers’ union in Germany and the biggest in the
conferation of unions DGB with about 38% of weight shows that. In its 10 Gründe für den Euro und
die Währungsunion it defend the differences in productivity to leave Germany leading the European
market. In other terms, they difend the different degree of productivity that allows the conversion of
surplus value into profit, that is, the valorization of capital. And it is precisely from the automotive
industry that comes the proposal to reform the ‘labor market’!

2. Flexibility (2min30sec)

In fact it was the Perter Hartz the executive manager of the human resources of Volkswagen to push
for a reform of the German labour market under the Chancellor Schröder (1998-2005).
The real cost of labor has been reduced throughout Europe in the first decade of the third
millennium, but Germany prevailed overall. The reduction in ‘labour costs’ was 10%. It included
thirteen ‘innovations’ deployed on four measures, Hartz I-IV. Adopted between 2003 and 2005:

H-I expects the industrial reserve army (the unemployed population) to accept any work offered to
them even if it is paid less than State unemployment benefits.
H-II created a mini-job where one earns less than €400 a month.

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H-III limits the right to unemployment benefits for older workers to one year and limits access to this
allowance.
H-IV has combined various types of ‘State assistance’ and imposed a ceiling of €345 per month.

Subsequently, there was:

1. An increase in the retirement age (i.e., more absolute surplus value).


2. An increase in taxation (i.e., more relative surplus value).
3. The support of private pension funds under the name of Riester Rente (i.e., privatization of
social production).

3. Unemployment (2min30sec)

Show slide 9 and 10.

Unemployment is necessary under capitalism. It is the relative surplus population. It serves to


increase, keep in check or slow down the fall rate of profit. Therefore, it serves to manipulate the
surplus value. To keep an adequate rate of surplus value and fight back workers associations, capital
has 6 instruments:

1. Overproduction of capital goes to overproduction of workers, instead of the other way round
2. Intensify automation
3. Increase underemployment and unemployment
4. Increase productivity faster than wages
5. Reconstructing faster the value of necessary labour (wages)
6. Attack wages by means of direct reduction (salary) or by indirect means (inflation, taxation,
and debts)

And here lies the need of the bourgeoisie to absorb, split, marginalize or crash any form labour
association. But this meets further contradictions:

1. A slow growth and social antagonism


2. A physical and physiological limitation of workers (which become progressively passive and
indifferent)

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3. A better labour discipline induced by State terrorism (imposed by fear of unemployment and
underemployment).

As a result, the ruling class can break different forms of collective agreements, and make living
standars and wages tend towards physical minimum. In so doing, workers movements and
associations, including trade unions, are demolished and integrated as State apparatus.

Show slide 11.

Conclusions (6min)

Show slide 12 and 13.

From the analysis reported in these pages we can reach some conclusions drawn not only from the
logic of development of the capitalist mode of production, but also from ‘its’ history.

Particular conclusions:

1. Trade unions have become ineffective for the democratic transformation of society, that is, to
achieve common ownership of the means of production.
2. Trade unions have been integrated ideologically, economically, socially and politically into
the bourgeois world. From them we can expect nothing but ‘reforms’.
3. The destruction and control of the conditions of life and production by the ruling class has
made possible the subjective integration, i.e., the internalization, of the workers’ movements,
including trade unions, both for the petty bourgeois movements for ‘labour rights’ and for the
revolutionary movements to overcome wage labour.

General conclusions:

1. The weight of ‘national politics’ is all the more irrelevant as its dependence on world
production increases. In other terms, it would become useless and impossible any attempt for
local bourgeoisie to reconstruct capitalism on a national basis or for workers to overcome
capitalism and the bourgeois State from within.

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2. ‘National politics’ is the more reactionary the less it will be able to ‘impose itself’ on an
‘international’ scale.
3. The class struggle for the workers is the more ineffective the less it internationalizes its
development.
4. The importance of ‘international politics’ becomes the more important when power is
concentrated in supranational institutions caused by the needs of further centralization of
capital that would need a form of global bourgeois State. It is needed because the increase in
productivity, detaching further exchange values from use values, needs more developed
structures and functions to fight back the effects of the increase in productivity to the rate of
surplus value, and to profits.
5. ‘Supranational institution’ would not centralize capital further in spite of additional
concentration of political power, if not in a fictitious way.
6. The policies of ‘supranational institutions’ are violent and neoliberal in inverse proportion to:
a. The ‘national’ constraints of those who presides them.
b. The ‘economical’ and ‘political’ constraints of those who command the choices of
these apparatuses.
c. Their capacity to supervise, punish, destroy or expand international production and
transfer of values.
7. The destruction of democracy appears to be inversely proportional to:
a. The objective domination of capital over labor by means of primitive and capital
accumulation backed by control over the means of production, means of subsistence and
means of destruction.
b. The more or less manifested alliance by the petty bourgeoisie with the lords of world
capitalism by means of social status and benefits.
c. The introjection and the uncritical acceptation of capitalism by part of the proletariat,
and partially by its vanguard, by means of State terrorism (above all by means of supply-side
policies).

Those conclusions imply three further results:

8. A complete blunder against and over the big bourgeoisie by the petty-bourgeoisie and the
opportunist proletariat.
9. An enslavement of the petty-bourgeoisie and part of the opportunist proletariat to the profit
needs of their oppressors and their own, selfish needs.

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10. The rest of the working class, and a part of its vanguard, and more or less enlighten petty-
bourgeoisie will be, therefore, further smashed and marginalized. Again, democracy is pushed
further down.

Total time: 21min30sec.

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